Amber Alert

by Patrick Logan

  If I don’t hear from her in the next hour or so, I’m going to use it, he thought, knowing that he’d made the same deal with himself an hour ago. And the hour before that.

  And the hour before that.

  Sipping his coffee, Stitts waited for Terrence and Darren the tech guy to finish their discussion before they turned to face him.

  “Still nothing out at Kingsfield?” Jordan asked.

  Terrence shook his head.

  “Nothing. Not a single fucking bite,” he said, before addressing Darren. “Did your algorithm come up with a secondary location?”

  Darren hammered away at his keyboard.

  “Not really. I mean, it gives a 90% probably to Kingsfield, while the remaining 10% is spread out all over several counties.”

  Terrence collapsed the seat beside Stitts and started massaging his temples.

  “Fuck. It’s been more than 48 hours since Stacy went missing, and more than a week since the other girls were taken.”

  The man didn’t need to finish the thought; Stitts knew the implications of a person who was missing for more than 48 hours. Especially a child.

  “Lab came back negative for any useable prints or DNA on Stacy’s bike, and nobody at all seems to have seen anything. It’s like… it’s like the girls just vanished.”

  With Terrence’s words on their minds, the four men sat in silence sipping their coffees. Stitts’s thoughts eventually turned to Chase to the missing girls and back again with no discernible pattern. And then, for some reason, he began to think about his father, about what had happened all those years ago when he’d treated Chase. He was clearly unqualified, but he’d meant to do right by her and her family. The man couldn’t have possibly known that things would go so wrong any more than he could have predicted his wife stealing his prescription pad.

  They found a girl, his father’s voice suddenly spoke in his head. She was covered in dirt, wandering around the fair after it was closed.

  Stitts raspberried his lips.

  The fucking fair… The fucking Williamson County Fair. What is it about—

  He suddenly snapped his fingers and turned to Darren.

  “What if… what if the location of the abductions isn’t important. What if the location of the fairs is what matters, instead. Jordan, you said earlier that if our unsubs used the fair as a way to scope these girls out, it would mean that they would have to follow them all the way back to their homes afterward. For Stephanie McMahon, that would mean going from Kingston Springs to Franklin. Do you think you could punch that into your algorithm, Darren? Would it make a difference?”

  Darren nodded.

  “Sure, I can try it.”

  With that, he spun around and began manipulating the image on the Smartboard, adding the coordinates for the different fairs — Kinston Springs, Triune, and Williamson — to the map. Five minutes later, the circular shadows appeared over these locations. A few seconds after that, a crimson showed up.

  Only this time it wasn’t located in Kingsfield, but a County to the South.

  “Fly County?” Stitts read.

  Exhaustion and the unfruitful exploration of Kingsfield had tempered their enthusiasm.

  “It’s a small farming community, no more than a couple hundred residences. I think there’s one B&B, maybe. I dunno, it’s mostly empty fields,” Jordan informed the group.

  “Darren, how reliable is this information?” Terrence asked.

  Darren shrugged.

  “The more points of interest, the more accurate it is. With only three points… it’s less reliable than with Kingsfield, that’s for sure.”

  But Stitts wasn’t about to give up. Not yet. And, besides, he couldn’t fathom just sitting here, smoking cigarettes and picking the lint from his navel any longer.

  “What else do we have to go on?” he asked. “We’ve got nothing. No ransom, no leads, no witnesses. We’ve got strange fucking women in white dresses and we’ve got this connection to the local fairs. I say we give it a shot. I say we go check out this Fly County.”

  Jordan the to Terrence, who looked to Darren, before turning back to Stitts.

  They were all exhausted now, is more tired and worried in the last.

  No matter the stakes, there was none that endless energy reserves that they could all tap into. And caffeine would only do so much to stave off exhaustion.

  And in Stitts’s experience, the more tired one was, the more likely they were to make a mistake.

  A mistake that would end up costing one of the little girls the lives.

  And yet, doing nothing was somehow worse.

  With a groan, Terrence rose to his feet.

  “I’ll call in the local PD,” he said, stretching his back. “Allow them to door-to-door us. Steps, you up for another hike?”

  Chapter 51

  Chase’s fingers were no longer just raw, they were ravaged. She was certain that she’d cut herself several times with the glass, but this didn’t slow her progress. If anything, seeing her own blood, made it more real and fueled her desperation.

  She dug, and she dug until the sun started to rise, until her arms and shoulders and back ached. Throughout the night, she heard several of the missing girls snoring softly, but they never work.

  Chase wondered if they’d been drugged, if the pasta that Andy — Becky, her name is Becky — loved so much had a little extra something in it to keep them docile.

  After all, they weren’t behaving like children who had been violently uprooted from their families.

  Yet, despite her efforts, Chase hadn’t managed to get very far. The ground was just too hard, and she was just too big. The hole she’d dug was only about eight-inches deep and maybe a foot wide. She couldn’t even get the top of her head through.

  But Chase kept on digging undeterred, even though it was nearly impossible to imagine making a hole large enough to slip through. She was so focused on digging, in fact, that she didn’t hear the door open.

  She didn’t even hear Brian make his way down the hall and barely noticed him when he stopped outside her cell.

  He noticed her, however, and when he saw her bloody hands clutching the broken glass, he rushed to open the cell door.

  “Chase, what have you done to yourself?” Brian asked, genuine concern in his voice.

  Through blurred vision, Chase looked up at the man.

  And that’s when she realized that it wasn’t Brian; it was Jeremy Stitts. The man’s patchy gray hair was replaced by Stitts’s perfect coif, while his nicotine-stained teeth suddenly straightened and turned white.

  It was Stitts. After all, Stitts was always looking out for her, going out of his way to clean up her messes, to make sure she was okay.

  And Chase needed him now more than ever. She needed him to take her away from this place, to protect her from those that wanted to hurt her. To protect her from herself.

  “Stitts?” Chase said softly.

  The man didn’t answer; he just stared at her.

  Chase dropped the cup and lunged at her partner, wrapping her arms around his neck.

  She breathed him in, and instead of smelling stale cigarettes, she smelled only leather-scented aftershave.

  “I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you with that glass. I was just… I was so confused, Stitts.”

  The man returned her embrace.

  “It’s okay, Chase. We’re just glad to have you back.”

  ***

  “This is going to sting a little, Chase. You’ve really done a number on your hands.”

  Chase nodded, and the man dabbed the alcohol-soaked cotton swab on her fingers.

  Someone hissed, but Chase was pretty sure that it wasn’t her. She wasn’t even looking at her hands; she was staring at the faded wallpaper, the decor that looked like it was straight out of the 60s. The man had taken upstairs, through a trapdoor and into a small house. From there, he’d escorted her to this bathroom.

  But that’s all she
knew. She didn’t know what city she was in, what State, or even what Country.

  She didn’t even know how she got her.

  In fact, pretty much the only thing that Chase knew was that Stitts was helping her.

  After he finished bandaging her mangled hands, he addressed the wound on her forehead.

  Chase couldn’t remember how the cut had come to be. She thought she recalled striking Stitts with a glass, but could it have been the other way around? Could he have struck her?”

  Chase stared up into the man’s caring brown eyes and shook her head.

  No, he would never do that. If there’s one thing I know for sure, is that Stitts would never hurt me. He wouldn’t lie to me and he wouldn’t hurt me.

  Stitts finished with the bandage and then patted her gently on the shoulder.

  “There, you’re all patched up.”

  Chase thanked the man and then looked around the bathroom.

  “Did we find her, Stitts?” she asked quietly.

  “Find who?”

  “Georgina… my sister. Did we find her?”

  The man squeezed her shoulder.

  “Yeah, we did. And she’s fine, Chase. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Chase nodded and Stitts helped her to her feet and led her out of the bathroom.

  “I think… I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised.”

  Chapter 52

  Terrence slammed his hands down on the steering wheel several times.

  “Fuck,” he whispered at first and then shouted the curse several times in rapid succession.

  Stitts’s disappointed manifested itself differently. Instead of lashing out, he reclined in his seat and closed his eyes.

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept, but he knew that it would be some time yet before he got any rest.

  Like in Kingsfield, they’d come up empty in Fly County.

  Stitts opened his eyes and turned his gaze to the moon. It was a cooler night than the day would have let on, but it was by no means chilly. Still, the air was fresh, and he inhaled deeply, only to breathe in the reek of his own sweat. At least Stitts wasn’t alone in this regard; Terrence’s black t-shirt was damp and there was dirt smeared across his cheeks.

  “That’s it, Stitts. That’s it for me, for tonight. I need to go home and take a shower, have a drink and get some rest.”

  Stitts nodded.

  “Where can I take you?” Terrence asked as he put the car into drive.

  Stitts thought about this for a moment. He’d arranged accommodations in Nashville before they’d even left Virginia but making the trek back to the big city now felt like a monumental task.

  Especially without Chase by his side.

  Instead of answering right away, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Give me a sec,” he said as he punched in Chase’s number. Like every other time he’d called, it rang once, then went straight to voicemail.

  “No word from her yet, huh?” Terrence asked absently as he drove.

  Stitts shook his head and looked at the moon again.

  “Nothing,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “You did the right thing in telling her, Stitts. I know Jordan can be an asshole and has the tact of a bumblebee trapped in a honey jar, but it was the right thing to tell her.”

  Stitts frowned. He didn’t like when other people spoke about Chase, especially not someone who had only known her for a few days. Sure, Terrence met well, but he didn’t know Chase.

  Not the way Stitts did.

  Drawing his eyes away from the moon, Stitts looked at his cellphone again. His thumb hovered over the icon that consisted of several concentric green circles.

  “I’m just worried about her,” he said.

  Fuck it, he thought, she already hates me anyway.

  Then he pushed the locater icon, his mind turning back to his conversation with Dr. Matteo, about their plan to get Chase to come in for treatment.

  And about how they had to give their phones to the orderly, who, with Stitts instructions, installed the location app on her phone.

  He hated working in secret and he hated lying to Chase, but he didn’t want to lose her. Not after what happened in Chicago and Vegas.

  Not after what happened here, in Franklin County.

  As the app loaded, he turned to Terrence.

  “Take me back to TBI headquarters. I’m not quite done yet.”

  ***

  Stitts was staring at his phone as he walked into TBI headquarters. He was so distracted by the fact that nothing was showing up on the locater app, that he nearly bumped into Jordan.

  “Careful, Stitts,” the man said. “Listen, I put out that silent APB on your partner’s car like you asked, on the BMW, but so far nothing’s come back.”

  Stitts’s frown deepened.

  So, no sightings of her vehicle and either the app wasn’t installed correctly, or she removed the Sim card.

  Either way, he was back to where he started, with no idea where his partner had gone.

  “Thanks,” Stitts grumbled.

  “Where’s Terrence? He must have taken his sweet ass time getting back here, seeing as I got here first and left after both of you.”

  “He went home to shower and get some rest.”

  “You gonna do the same?”

  Stitts shook his head. He wanted to shower, and he wanted to sleep, but neither was going to happen. Not with the girls still missing and now Chase gone, as well.

  “I’ve got a few more things I want to look into. Which reminds me, is the tech guy still here? Is Darren around?”

  Jordan nodded.

  “Those guys never sleep — he’s still in the conference room fucking around his computer. Listen, I’m not tired either. Mind if I join you?”

  Stitts shrugged. If Jordan had asked him this an hour or two ago, he might have told the man to fuck off. But he was beginning to think that Terrence was right; Jordan was an asshole, sure. But he was an asshole who had the best of intentions.

  Back in the conference room, Stitts spread all the folders — the ones containing the recent missing goals as well as the ones that Chase had brought with her — across the table.

  “What are you thinking?” Jordan asked as he served more cups of hot coffee.

  Stitts shook his head. He wasn’t sure what he was thinking and the longer he stared at the photos of the missing girls, the more their faces became blurred, the more they merged into one, incoherent blob.

  “I don’t have a clue. I don’t have a clue where to start.”

  He reached out and grabbed a photo a random and found himself looking at an image of a girl taken more than 30 years ago.

  He stared into her eyes and wondered what that girl had been thinking when she was taken. Did the man who took her promise to bring her back after a period of time? Did he lure her in with milk and cookies? Did he pretend to be her friend?

  Stitts wondered if the girl felt the terror of never being able to see her family again.

  Had Georgina felt that terror? Did Chase, when she was held captive?

  Stitts shivered and realized that he must have fallen asleep for a moment. He tossed the picture onto the table, then grabbed another one. This time, it was Kim Bernard, the woman that Chase claimed was in the grocery store video, all grown up.

  “You know what?” he said quietly. Darren and Jordan turned to look at him. “I know that we can’t confirm that these missing girls from 30 years ago went to the fair — except Georgina — but what if we just assumed that they did. What if we assume they went to the fair closest to there homes. Can we add these data points to the three you already have from Stephanie, Tracy, Becky, and Stacy?”

  Darren nodded, but before he could get to work, Jordan spoke up.

  “Look, I know you respect your partner and everything, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t know what she saw in that video, but there’s no way of knowing that the woman in the white dre
ss is one of the missing girls from 30 years ago. I’m sorry, but—”

  Stitts frowned.

  “We’ve got nothing else. Just plug it in, Darren.”

  Jordan looked like he was going to add more but reluctantly acquiesced in silence.